Default user agent in Wget

Question

I want to know what default user agent is passed if I use wget from command line without specifying explicit user agent.

I have some code which cahnges output based on user agent .

wget http://www.google.com -O test.html

Answer 1

"wget -d" will show the request made to the server.

$ wget -d http://www.google.com -O/dev/null 2>&1 |grep ^User-Agent
User-Agent: Wget/1.13.4 (linux-gnu)
User-Agent: Wget/1.13.4 (linux-gnu)
User-Agent: Wget/1.13.4 (linux-gnu)

Answer 2

At your shell prompt, do:

> man wget

scroll down to -U agent-string, which states:

"Wget normally identifies as Wget/version, version being the current version number of Wget".

So do:

> wget --version

which will give you the version, and thus your user-agent.

Incidently, you may find that some sites block wget, so depending on what you're doing you may need to change this.